UNITED NATIONS - Iraqi officials promised yesterday to declare any weapons of mass destruction by the Dec. 8 deadline and reaffirmed that United Nations arms inspectors would have full access to all sites across the country.
After a meeting between chief weapons inspectors and senior Iraqi officials, Gen. Amir al-Saadi said Iraq would cooperate with Resolution 1441, passed unanimously by the Security Council on Nov. 8, which gives Iraq a "final chance" to disarm.
"Within 30 days, as the resolution says, a report from Iraq will be submitted on all the files - nuclear, chemical, biological and missile files," al-Saadi said. He added that in two meetings with U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei from the International Atomic Energy Agency, they discussed the forthcoming inspections "in order to avoid problems or misunderstandings" that beset inspections in the past.
"We are hopeful," al-Saadi said. "We are, in fact, quite sure that things will work much better than before."
Iraq maintains that it has no weapons of mass destruction, so the contents of the Dec. 8 declaration are a matter of great curiosity for Security Council members, especially the United States and Britain, whose intelligence services have compiled lists of what they believe Iraq possesses.
When U.N. inspectors left Iraq four years ago after facing continued resistance and obstacles, they had a long list of items that were unaccounted for, including deadly VX nerve gas, 7,100 liters of anthrax and a number of Scud missiles. If Iraq's accounting of its weapons arsenal does not match the inspectors' list or if a member state believes there are intentional omissions, the Security Council will consider what the next steps should be. The options range from seeking clarification to authorizing an attack on Iraq. "We told them that this declaration should be comprehensive, concise and clear, as the Security Council mentions," said ElBaradei, "and it should include all factors that the Security Council demanded."
On the inspectors' second day in Iraq, they began technical preparations for formal inspections to begin Nov. 27. They reopened their old command center in the former Canal Hotel in Baghdad. They will set up secure phone lines, arrange jeeps and helicopters, and install a laboratory for testing. The resolution calls for surprise inspections, anywhere, any time, and there are hundreds of sites on the inspectors' lists.
The preparations began just as a dispute over clashes in the no-fly zones was heating up. U.S. officials declared over the weekend that targeting U.S. and British coalition aircraft patrolling areas in the country's north and south would be a "material breach" of the resolution.
However, none of the other 14 members of the Security Council - including Britain - agrees with the U.S. interpretation.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan weighed in on the issue yesterday. "Let me say that I don't think that the council will say this is in contravention of the resolution of the Security Council," he said while traveling in Kosovo.
Coalition aircraft carried out two separate strikes Monday in the north and south, after being fired on by Iraqi forces. The United States and Britain declared the "no-fly" zones after the 1991 Persian Gulf war to protect Kurds in Iraq's north and Shiite Muslims in the south from Saddam Hussein's forces, but they are not explicitly required by the Security Council. Iraq regards them as an infringement on its sovereignty and routinely fires at the planes. Iraq said four people were injured in the Monday strikes.
At U.N. headquarters in New York, attention turned to the humanitarian situation in Iraq. The chief of the "oil for food" program, Benon Sevan, reported that the newly instituted "smart sanctions" - which were implemented in July, creating a Goods Review List of banned items and allowing everything else to go through - appeared to be working. He said nearly all of the contracts that were put on hold by Security Council members had been cleared. But because of a prolonged drop in Iraqi oil sales, Iraq's U.N. escrow account lacks the money to pay for $3 billion of approved contracts.
"While understandably the current discussions are focused on the resumption of the weapons-inspections regime, all concerned [should] also focus attention on the humanitarian dimension and spare no effort in meeting the dire humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people," Sevan told the council.
To provide humanitarian relief from sanctions implemented after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the United Nations has administered Iraq's trade since 1995 to allow Iraq to sell oil to buy basic goods and to prevent imports that can be used for military purposes. The sanctions were to be dropped when Iraq disarmed.
The United Nations revamped the program this summer after years of complaints that it was run inefficiently and was delaying the delivery of basic humanitarian goods. The resulting "smart sanctions" have noticeably improved health, nutrition, education and other standard-of-living measures in Iraq, Sevan said, but he urged more donations.
Maggie Farley writes for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.